Monday, April 30, 2012

Quality of Life: Pee Me a River

"So where the heck have you been?," you may be asking yourself as you read this. Well, I wish I could answer you, but after weeks of travel I'm not so sure myself. The truth is, I'm disorientated--so much disorientated that I can't even compose properly sentences with correctly grammaticals or spealing structure, much less reconstruct an accurate timeline of the past month. Really, as far as timelines go, the best I can do is this:

Nevertheless, I'm doing my best to piece things together, and to that end I figured I should at least try to get a handle on where I am now. This isn't as easy as it sounds, because you can spend an entire lifetime here in New York without ever really making sense of the place. And even when you do start coming to grips with it, you leave town for awhile and then come back and find you have to start all over again. It's like almost solving a Rubik's Cube, leaving on the coffee table while you go to the bathroom, and then picking it up again afterwards. Once you're out of the groove, it's difficult to get back into it again. That's why you should always bring your Rubik's Cube into the bathroom with you.

At the same time, traveling also helps you appreciate New York. Sure, it's fun to visit entry-level cities like Portland and Austin, and even intermediate-level cities like Seattle and San Francisco, and after awhile you can even delude yourself into thinking that these places are in the real world. Eventually though it becomes undeniably that they aren't, and that they're merely the urban equivalent of group rides with a no-drop policy. Sooner or later you start craving actual competition again (as difficult and ruthless as it may be) and you're relieved to return to the race that is New York.

But while this may be true culturally, it's quite the opposite from a cycling perspective. Indeed, in terms of cycling, the New York City area is a backwater, and her riders are mostly just a bunch of rubes. The artisanal smugness of Portland; the dynamic flambullience of San Francisco; even the Ben Franklinesque ethos of Philadelphia all serve to emphasize New York's place as the Christian Vande Velde of American cycling cities. Sure, it wasn't always this way. We once boasted the vibrant racing scene that produced riders like George Hincapie, and we singlehandedly created the bike messenger archetype. Now though our racing scene consists of dueling investment bankers who hire coaches and spend tens of thousands of dollars on crabon exotica, and our messengers are clothes horses who spend the obligatory three-to-five years in New York before retreating to an entry-level town. As far as business and entertainment go we may be the City that Never Sleeps, but when it comes to cycling we're the Aluminum Jamis With a Pie Plate.

Even our riding destinations are hopelessly lame. If you live in New York, you know that every weekend a gigantic Fred Migration takes place, traveling over the George Washington Bridge and up Route 9W towards Piermont and Nyack and even Bear Mountain. In the early hours these migrants are the aforementioned investment banker club racers, though as the day wears on they yield to an interminable procession of tridorks in arm warmers and sleeveless half-shirts who drink from aerobar-mounted sippy cups:

According to the article, the "boons" of Piermont are that it "evokes a Mediterranean hillside, or maybe Sausalito, Calif." Now, I happen to think Piermont is very pleasant. It's pretty. It's quiet. There are quaint little shops that sell shit you'd never want. However, I've also been to both the Mediterranean and to Sausalito, and Piermont evokes both of these places in the way Boone's Farm evokes actual wine. Mostly, the relatively few similarities simply serve to underscore the vast superiority of the genuine article. Still, it's a lovely place as far as the greater metropolitan area goes.

But what are the "banes" of living in Piermont? Well, apparently they're high taxes--and of course bikes:

So magnetic is the village today, according to residents, that tourists and bicyclists often arrive in droves on weekends. The bicyclists often pay little heed to the designated bike lanes, said Robert Samuels, a former journalist and author who has lived here since 1982. “They talk loudly and shout back and forth to one another, often waking me out of a sound sleep on a Sunday morning,” said Mr. Samuels, whose book “Blue Water, White Water” (Up the Creek Publishing, 2011) details his struggle with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a muscle disorder.

But other than the bicyclists and high annual property taxes, most of Piermont’s 2,500 residents consider their village as close to perfect as it gets, said Mr. Samuels, the president of the 500-member civic association.

Now, I'm no stranger to entitlement. I've visited Boulder. I've visited Portland. I've visited Marin County. These are the nose-stinging bubbles in our national soda pop of smugness. However, you've reached a higher plane of entitlement when your biggest quality-of-life problem is the sound of Fred chat. If you can't handle the gentle whirring of a freehub while two middle-aged men patter on about their wheelsets then you probably can't handle anything. Would they prefer the constant farting of Harley-Davidsons? (Of which I've seen plenty around those parts, by the way.) The whining of high-revving "crotch rockets?" The thundering of tractor-trailers? Heedless motorists who run down their children? Really, when cyclists are coming to your town in droves, that's merely a sign of how good you have it. It's when the cyclists stay away at all costs that you've really got a problem, because it means that your town sucks.

In any case, I was so disgusted by the whining of the people of Piermont that I made the following pledge: From now on, I will hold in my pee-pee until I get to Piermont instead of publicly relieving myself near the George Washington Bridge where it's merely the Port Authority's problem.

Together we can reach our goal of a yellow Piermont, and I I hope you will join me in this effort.

In any case, given New York City's status as a remedial cycling city, it was sort of sweet that we had a bike show this past weekend:

Watching New York City have a bike show is like watching a baby try to work an iPhone: it's extremely cute, something fun might happen by accident, but really they have no idea what they're looking at. I don't exclude myself from this, by the way, because I am very much a New Yorker, and I had no idea what I was looking at either. For example, I saw this bike outside of the show, which led me to wonder if apehanger bars are the new chopped riser bars:

Well, apparently they are, because there was a whole booth dedicated to them:

I would have asked this person to explain what I was looking at, but I was too afraid of his pants:

Equally confusing was the matter of why, if I was at a bike show in New York, I was looking at a Mini Cooper with Jersey plates:

And then there was this thing:

In addition to being confused as to why you'd ever want to carry a bottle of wine in this manner, I was also confused about why I couldn't touch the bike, and so I just said "Fuck it" and touched it anyway:

("Yeah, I touched it. What are you gonna do about it?")

I'm about as big a "woosie" as you're likely to find (yes, I cried when those adhesive wristbands ripped out my arm hair), but even I'm not afraid of someone who uses a leather wine bottle holder on his faux old-timey bicycle.

Of course, this being New York City, there was also plenty of media. For example, I got to see a real-life hilpster interview taking place:

There were also publishers of the sorts of periodicals you buy at airports because you're desperate for something to read on the plane, you've already read everything else at the newsstand, and it's slightly more interesting than the in-flight magazine:

In case you can't tell, the above placard is stuck to a curtain, so I just assumed between that and the "Your Ideal Weight" headline that "Bicycling" was running some sort of carnivalesque weight-guessing stand. Eager to "fool the guesser," I peeled back the curtain, but to my surprise I instead found people listening to other people talk into microphones:

This turned out to be a happy accident, for I myself was supposed to talk into a microphone immediately after these people, which is what I did. I was also supposed to show slides while I talked, but I don't really know how to work my computer. Furthermore, the show had apparently hired a surlier version of Nick Burns as their A.V. guy, and he was resolutely unwilling to help me in any way. Therefore, I simply talked without the slides, which probably didn't make much difference since people can't see slides while they're sleeping anyway.

Lastly, in a final bout of total incompetence, I managed not to get a frontal photograph of a woman outside who was walking around topless:

Hopefully she doesn't decide to visit Piermont, since between the bicycles and the toplessness life there would become a waking nightmare.

2 things: 1, I saw on Sunday afternoon what appeared to be the result of a Tri-dork on the way back from the bridge taking out a family on the W.S.H.B.P just above the Intrepid... bike on ground, front wheel off, 3 other bikes across the path and 2 crying girls under the age of 10.

2, Central park Freds who pass you, pull out their Iphone and swerve back and forth while talking and slowing down only to get mad when you're in front again, are a pain as well.

Thats not a water bottle. I saw them on TriNewCrap.com, its for peeing into. On an excruciating 13 mile bike leg of a sprint triathlon one cannot take time to stop and urinate. It would kill their PB. You just extend the nozzle slip your little pp into it and AHHHHHHHHHHHH. The "Piermont Model" has a big hole in the bottom.

Great seeing you at the New Am Bike Show! All hail Lob! I ritually ate some crab rangoon today. (Not lobster, but close enough.) Does this mean I can now file a hate crime report against the six drivers that buzzed me today?

If NYC is the aluminum Jamis with a pie plate of cycling, does that make Boston the Wal-mart Huffy mountain bike of cycling?

Even though I went to a bike show in NYC, the extent of my riding experience there is central park on a badly adjusted rental hybrid and some small circles in the middle of the show on the Opus Lugano city bike.

PS - I'm the heckler that shouted "This is bullshit! Bike Snob is so over!"

PPS - Did you have a personal tech assistant on your BRA tour or something? Still can't figure out how to plug a Macbook into a projector?

Jamis sounds and reads too much like jammies. Only a pussy would ride a jamis.Scattante is way too close to scat. Only a shithead would buy, then ride a scattante.Specialized is for the insecure cyclist whose search for a bike begins and ends at the closest LBS. "At least the suggests I made the right choice" See Trek for same.Felt is good. Cannondale is good until you encounter the proprietary parts sizing. There are others. To be continued. Glad you're back!

enjoyed a post-bra ride with the wildcat himself, "roar" he said... not able to attend the bra at the bike show because of work, I left the historic cast iron districway to start my weekend to encounter a rider in a dandy tan Brookes coat and black cycle cap, making sure not to come even come close to shoal him (and become subject of his bad photography) I srtuck up a conversation & we rode about 8 blocks fred chatting at the lights before he turned off to cross over the big skanky on a different bridge than I... It was a pleasure to meet you too WCRM/RTMS next time I'm asking about Death Penguins!ps today I'm changing my studded tire so I can sneak up on people

You might check the manual on this, but I don't think you're allowed to say anything like "or maybe Sausalito" in a piece of professional writing.

Regardless, I'm surprised the people of Piermont can even hear the Freds over the din of car-horns at every intersection, as pushy douches repeatedly jump the stop-sign order and cut off whiny crybaby douches all day long. Oh wait, sorry, that's the intersection outside my window in Portland.

I don't mean to brag, but I stayed awake for the entire BSNYC BRA at the New Amsterdam bike thing, notwithstanding the fact that like the good burghers of Piermont whose weekend repose is interrupted by the early ejaculations of cyclists, my Saturday began way too early with the unfelicitous strains of Con Edison jack hammers.

BSNYC was illuminating, although my dog opined that in place of the missing slide show, he would have used shadow puppets.

Of course, my dog is hardly a reliable observer.

All of his shadow puppets look the same (but mention that and he carries on about the smugness of people with opposable thumbs).

And besides, he missed BSNYC's talk because the free beverage limit in the show's beer garden area was enforced informally and he couldn't tear himself away.

Oh well, at least he says he now knows how to prepare for our next ride through Piermont.

...when the car was taken & then seen on various security cams in various locales, we all kinda hadda laugh despite guy fieri being sorta local 'cuz you just knew his ass was covered...

...sure enough, chevy gave him a new camaro convertible to help him over 'the heartbreak' (he drives around in an old '69 camaro convertible on his 'diners, dives & drive-ins' tv show - tough work, if you can get it) & i'm sure insurance leased him a new lamborghini gallardo, so it wasn't hard to appreciate the humorous aspects of something so high profile disappearing with no leads, yet being seen driving around...

That dude has a Lambroghini? I remember seeing his picture thinking "I did not know working at T.G.I. Fridays payed so well". Oh he dresses like that all the time? That's cool. I guess. He should have put the keys in the console instead of leaving them in the ignition.

That may be the most egregious disembodied hand shot that I have ever seen. Plus, I think that the pair of blue goobers with the twinned yellow tie wraps look way more out of place than the wine bottle.It has been a long dry week, though.

On the grouchy Piermont end of things in Marin, there is that sign by the road in Nicasio that asks cyclists to talk quietly. I mean, it's more likely to be Ducatis than Harleys drowning out everything else, but please... why live on the main road if you can't handle a few decibels on a Sunday morning?

bgw, if you're still around, Paradise isn't so great - not enough hills.

BS, Please.... It's BIG George. In just two months it will again be time for the annual Tour of French Wine, Cheese & Chateau Country and every day Sherwin et al will say over and over "Big George Hincapie".

I mean, it's more likely to be Ducatis than Harleys drowning out everything else, but please... why live on the main road if you can't handle a few decibels on a Sunday morning?_________________________http://www.wordgoogle.com | http://www.cilukbah.com

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!